by Jake Logan
The wooden bathtub was dragged out and filled half-full with steaming water, and then she began to undress. In the red-orange light, reflections of the colors shone on her bare skin as the clothes slipped away. Sitting on the chair, he toed off his boots, shed his shirt, all the time watching as she uncovered her full willowy figure. Then she stood naked, hugging her long breasts tipped by dark brown rosettes, ready to test the water with her toes. Satisfied, she stepped in and eased down in the tub.
With a wet cloth and bar of soap, she began to lather herself. He watched her movements. She had the grace of a ballerina onstage. The radiant fireplace was hot on his face, and his back, clad in his long-handle underwear, was cold as he stared at her efforts. No matter—this would be the night to share her body under the covers. Thoughts of her smooth skin pressed to his made him intoxicated with desire.
“We should have drawn straws for the first in the water.”
“No,” he said. “This way, I get to watch you and enjoy it.”
“I have only one more bar of soap in my saddlebags and my supply will be depleted.”
“Maybe we can find some.”
She rinsed her arms off and rose, shedding water as he looked at her frontally for the first time. There were women in paintings and marble sculptures like her. His breath short, he tried to contain his urges.
“Better let me in there,” he said, standing and undoing his one-piece underwear.
“I will,” she said, and began to dry herself on the feed-sack towels.
“Then you need to get in under the covers. It must be getting real cold out here.”
“I will—it is chilly.”
He dipped out some more hot water, and hobbled over on his bare feet to add it to the tub. Then he slid in the water, and the warmth soaked quickly through his skin. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, she was kneeling beside him. He put an arm around her and they kissed. Her firm breast was in his chest as he savored her mouth.
“I didn’t want you to forget our purpose,” she said, and laughed softly.
“I ain’t forgetting anything,” he said, using the yellow bar of lye soap to lather his arms.
She tilted her head from side to side and rose. “I hope not.”
His erection wasn’t forgetting either, he decided. He quickly washed, rinsed, and took a dry towel from the nearby chair. She was in the bed with her face peering out and smiling. He’d see if he could widen that smile. Looking at the fireplace, he decided to toss some more wood on it before joining her. It would save getting up later.
Then he crossed the room and slid in under the covers she held up for his entry. The transfer from the chill in the room’s air to the blankets and her body heat relaxed him as much as the bath. Their arms entangled, he sought her mouth and they locked lips. He pressed to her as one of her breasts crushed against him. Her silky legs parted and he dropped to his knees between them, taking some of his weight off her. He felt her palms slide over her belly and then down.
She eagerly directed his rising erection into her gates, and raised her butt off the bed for his entry. A soft cry escaped her lips when he pushed past her tight ring, and he began to pump his hard dick to her. She tossed her curly hair on the pillow and arched her back until their pubic bones rubbed against each other. Her clit grew hard and scratched the top of his blood-engorged tool forcing its way through her contracting walls.
Their breathing grew louder and their involvement hotter and deeper in the flames of passion’s highest plateau. He was going wild in and out of her. Her fingers clutched his upper arms and she was moaning with pleasure.
Then he found the first wave of cum had left his testicles for her. Like two hot irons, one stuck in each side of his butt, the flames came bursting out the swollen head of his dick and filled her. She collapsed and hugged him hard.
“Oh, dear God—”
Raised up so his weight wasn’t smothering her, he saw the tears that ran down her cheeks in the candlelight. He dropped his head down and kissed them away.
“Oh, Slocum—I never intended to cry.”
“Hush. It’s your right to cry.”
She clutched him. “Stay in me. I still need you.”
He agreed and savored their closeness. It was a nice night inside the cabin with a cold wind tearing at the eaves and three killers down the trail. Three men out there that needed to be brought to justice. His erection began to return as he moved it ever so slightly in and out of her.
A soft “Yes” escaped her lips.
16
Dog realized his sore head was in Alma’s lap. What hit him? He had been creeping up on that traitor Mia and someone had knocked him out again.
“They left—” Alma said, and wet her lips.
“They get the rifle?” He blinked his eyes and tried to raise up.
“Stay down. You may have a concussion. There is a big knot on the back of your head.”
They must have got the gun. “How long have they been gone?”
“A half hour or so. I was very worried they might have killed you.”
He blinked his sore eyes up at her, realizing she had him covered by a blanket. No one had ever done all this for him.
“Our horses?”
“They’re up in the cedars.”
“Good. The rifle is gone?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the azure sky and shook his sore head. “We can’t go after them without a weapon. Damn it to hell.”
“The Lord will provide,” she said.
“The Lord—”
She put a finger on his lips to silence him. “He provided you for me to escape that horrible ranch. He will provide you a weapon. Trust me.”
“What? Rocks?”
“He will provide.”
His head hurt too much to argue with her about religion. “You hear where they were going?”
“No, they rode south. I think they would have shot you, but several men over by the store were watching them. The black man shouted at the Indian not to shoot you and they rode out.”
Twice he’d been saved. They were afraid of his spirit. How much of his money did they spend at this outpost? No telling—he needed a gun.
“There is food they left, if you can eat.”
“I can eat.” He looked up into her blue eyes.
“I will have to set your head down to get some.” She looked worried about that.
“I’ll be fine.”
She took a folded blanket and put it under his head as she scooted out. On her feet, she ran to the fire and stoked it. He lay back and studied the sky. Needed a gun, needed to get after them, needed his head to stop pounding.
Who’d hit him this time? He didn’t know. He heard Alma coming with food, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Swinging the blanket around to his shoulders, he felt the fresh north wind. It would be cold by night.
“Here,” she said, sitting down cross-legged before him with a bowl of stew. “I can feed you.”
“I can feed myself,” he grumbled, and nodded toward the things the thieves had abandoned by the campfire. “Did they leave anything we need?”
She handed him the bowl and spoon. “I’ll go look.”
He glanced up from the steaming stew to watch her search the things scattered around the fire. Bent over, she soon called out, “There is a gun and holster here.”
He set down the bowl and swallowed a hot mouthful, which scorched his throat. It was his gun! She’d found his Colt among the things they’d left. He bounded to his feet, and then the world went black.
He heard her scream and he fell facedown.
“You all right?”
He looked up into her pale face and nodded. “I’ll be fine.”
“Lie still. I’ll feed you. There’s about ten new twenty-dollar gold pieces on the ground over there too. Must have spilled them.”
“Good,” he said, then smiled and lay back on her lap. His head hurt worse, but he felt better. Money and guns, tho
se four wouldn’t get far ahead of him and her. He’d run them in the ground and kill ’em with his bare hands.
The next morning he still felt too dizzy to ride, and they gathered up the things they could from what the thieves had left behind in their haste, and moved their camp to an empty shack hidden back in the junipers. She got the sheet-iron stove to working, and he felt warm for the first time in days. Propped up against the wall, he drank her willow-bark tea until the head pain let up. It really did work. She’d bought a deer haunch from the man at the store, and cooked Dog some venison in a stew of potatoes and dried green peas.
The food tasted good, but he still knew he was too lightheaded to ride far. That gave the thieves another day’s head start—maybe two if he didn’t heal faster. He knew better than to ask her to go to the store and buy him some whiskey—Mormons hated whiskey, tea, and coffee.
He sat up and ate his supper, telling her how good the food tasted.
“There was a man and a woman at the store today. They were riding that bald-face horse and the dun Sarah Carnes had at her place.”
He glared at her. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know, but he wanted to know about Tar Boy and when he had left. The store man never mentioned us.”
“You sure?”
“He’s a Mormon. He’d never tell him a thing about us.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” She looked down hard at his hand gripping her forearm.
He released her. “Yeah, yeah. Was this man law?”
“Tall man. Dark beard and hair—”
“Tom White—the sumbitch. Who was the woman?”
‘I don’t know, but they were together—you can tell when a man and woman are together.”
“What did they do?”
“Rode off to Atlantic City, I guess. Looking for Tar Boy. They’d been to my place too and mentioned it was empty. Brother Yates never said a word—shook his head like he didn’t know anything about it.”
“Good, we can let him get Snake and Tar Boy and we get him.”
“You better not get too worked up. When you’re better, we can go after them if you have to.”
Have to? He had to because they had his money. What they hadn’t spent, dropped on the ground, or wasted, they had on them. In the morning he’d be strong enough to ride. Had to be.
17
Atlantic City was a treeless cluster of false-front buildings, shacks, and tents in a sagebrush sea. It had existed on the emigration trail for all the years that wagon trains rolled westward. Most new settlers by this time used the various cross-country railroads to come West, and the town, which was miles from the tracks, had begun to fall into a depression as fewer and fewer wagons rumbled past its gates.
A minor gold rush had quickly petered out, and it became more of a hangout for wanted men, horse thieves, outcast whores with no future, and the typical riffraff hiding from some dark secret past, hoping not to be known.
Slocum set the bald-face horse down and studied the smoke columns from various rusty stovepipes poking through roofs. He glanced over at Lilly with regret that she wasn’t back in Texas where the sun had some heat and there weren’t any threats to her like those that might lie ahead.
“You look concerned,” she said, and shivered in the sharp air.
“Atlantic City is a tough place. For your own safety I wish you weren’t here.” He paused, feeling pained for her welfare.
“I can shoot. I can fight.”
He rubbed his left palm on top of his pants leg. “This place is a hellhole. Those killers might be choirboys in this town’s crowd.”
“Slocum, I’m here and I can fight. Let’s get on with it.”
“One thing. Shoot first and ask questions later.”
She nodded.
Against his gut feeling, he booted the bald-face horse off the ridge. Mrs. Carnes had said the tracks he’d followed to her front door were those of a Mormon husband and wife. Slocum still doubted it. After swapping horses with Carnes, he’d lost their tracks heading back to the store.
He felt certain the two horses they rode had been stolen, probably in Utah. What business did a “Morman widow” have with that kind of high-priced horseflesh on a two-bit ranch in the brakes? But he carried two bills of sales that were supposed to be authentic for their mounts—so as long as the real owner didn’t recognize them, they’d be fine. He had to agree with Lilly that it beat the fire out of riding those iron-jawed mules.
Following the wagon tracks that straddled a dry short-grass ribbon between them, they soon reached the main street. He wished he knew what those killers were riding. But the nondescript horses standing windblown and hipshot at various racks offered him little information.
He indicated the livery and she agreed, looking steely-eyed at the weather-beaten structures and few residents out in the cold. A grizzly face or two on the boardwalk took her in, and then spit tobacco into the street like a period at the end of the sentence when she passed them.
They dismounted, and she held the reins while he struggled against the wind to open the big faded red door. A hostler soon came and assisted him, indicating that she should hurry and bring the two horses inside. With the door closed, the livery, smelling of horse piss, was dark save for some light coming through the gaps in the siding.
“Ten cents a day—twenty-five with grain.”
“Grain them after you water ’em and they cool down.” Slocum looked around. “Is there a place we can stay without bedbugs?”
The old man leaned over, squeezed his nose, and sent out a stream of phlegm. He wiped his fingers on the side of his britches and nodded. “There’s an empty shack on the hill out back. Been empty for months. Got a good stove, some coal, and firewood.”
“Why ain’t someone used it?”
He smiled in the half-light from under his gray beard. “’Cause I got it locked.”
“Yours?”
“Yeah, I stay down here. Cost you two bits a day.”
“Here’s two dollars. We’ll see how long we’re going to stay.”
“Good enough. Tie them horses, I’ll put them up,” the old man said to Lilly. “I’ll show you out the back door to the place.”
“Good,” Slocum said. “Has there been a black man and breed in town?”
“Buffalo soldier?”
“No, he’s civilian.”
The old man rubbed his hand over his bearded mouth. “I seen a couple blacks, but I thought that they was deserters.”
“His name’s Tar Boy and he’s running with a Sioux breed called Snake. There is another one called Red Dog, Sioux breed.”
“You looking fur them?”
Busy taking their bedroll off the saddle, Slocum turned to him and said, “Yes. They murdered her husband.”
He swept off his shapeless felt hat. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she said with her arms loaded. “Show us the way.”
The force of the wind tore the walk-through back door from the old man’s grasp. He swore, then caught his hat with one hand. “Better give you the key.” He took it from around his neck on a leather cord and gave it to her with an extra pat on the top of her hand.
“Need anything, holler.”
“We will, “Slocum promised, and she thanked him.
Two trips and they had their things inside the snug shack and a fire going. Except for some sheet metal that rattled on the roof, the place suited both of them. She brewed some coffee on the cookstove and made him a list of things she wanted from the store, including cinnamon and sugar to make rolls.
It was the first time since they found the abandoned ranch house that they’d been under a roof together. He settled back on their bedroll atop the rope bed in the room’s growing warmth and listened to the wind as well as to her singing “Sweet Betsy from Pike.”
“First time you’ve sung. Sounds good.”
Looking embarrassed, she nodded. “I guess it was the first time I wanted to sing.”
&
nbsp; “Hey, I know it hasn’t been a Sunday-school picnic for you.”
“No,” she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Without me along you’d probably already have caught them.”
“I doubt that.” He studied the highlights in her curly hair from the shaft of light coming in the small four-pane window.
Pursing her lips, she bent over him. “I know I’ve held you back.”
He swept her up in his arms and drew her down on top of him. “It’s been a helluva nice trip.”
Then he kissed her, and they were soon lost to it all.
Dark came early in the short day. After they ate supper, he cleaned his .44 Colt, re-oiled it, and loaded it with five cartridges. He spun the cylinder till the hammer rested on an empty. Then he holstered it. Time to go look for them. Rats came out at night.
She came over and kissed him. She’d finished washing their dishes and drying the last of them. “You be careful tonight.”
“Careful as I can be. You keep that door barred till I get back, and shoot first, ask questions later.”
“Yes, sir.”
He put on his jumper and felt hat, dreading the night wind. She walked him across the small shack to the door. He kissed her good-bye with his mind full of regret about not staying there, and then went into the starry night. The bitter north wind pushing him, he strode down the hillside on the wagon tracks between the dark clumps of sagebrush toward the outline of buildings. A few lights showed in windows. He could hear some music as he approached the town from the back side and went between two buildings to mount the sidewalk. Standing for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, he observed two drunks hanging on to each other and slurring their words as they wandered past and never noticed him. The saddle and harness shop was dark. Next he came to a saloon. The sounds from inside of a piano playing and some singing reached out into the night. In the starlight, he could read the name on the swinging sign: S.S. CANARY. Strange name for a saloon in the Wyoming sagebrush sea.
He tried the thumb latch and the door caught on the threshold and scraped open. In the smoky interior, a leggy woman seated in a man’s lap, about to spill out of the top of her red dress, shouted, “Howdy, partner.”
